Some Friday sillies, serious-ies and good things
Elvis Costello's albums are now finally on iTunes! You can get them via this link - and I'm listening to Every Day I Write The Book for the first time in how many years?
: happy sigh
I wanted to show off my two new FLAIL icons - the Heroes one is by lay_of_luthien and the Supernatural one is by nyaubaby and I am so so squeeful over both of them!
And in honor of the cancellation of Gilmore Girls, which I never watched in the first place but which I have managed to acquire what I think of as "pre-series Peter Petrelli/Sam Winchester, thank you very much" icons, I've added this one too:
Yes, two Milo Fighting People icons in one week. It's a coincidence, isn't it?
I've also been talking with robertstandring about the SpellCast Live Podcast that we're having two weeks from tomorrow night at Phoenix Rising - you can still send in an audition and get cast in advance - but we're also going to be doing some casting at PR itself - Robert is going to announce a time & place (or two) early next week.
Also, the FA meet-up may be moving from the Acme Oyster Bar to the Sheraton, so FA people can be on-site to deal with some SpellCast and Artists & Authors Night things - more info when we know for certain.
In non-fandom things, I was very amused to see the NY Times use the word frenemy to describe the relationship between Peter Parker and Harry Osborne in Spiderman 3. No, the word isn't in the Merriam Webster dictionary yet, so I guess that the Times now considers the presence of a term in Wikipedia to be sufficient grounds for them to use it? Go, Times! You're ever so very cute!
And in a non-fandom-with-implications-for-fandom thing, I wanted to write about the situation at Digg.com a bit.
Some of you may've heard what Digg and a few other news aggregation-cum-social networking sites did this past week. They decided to allow postings of the code that can be used to crack the encryption on HD DVDs (and I think Blu-Ray too, but I'm not sure). You can read the BBC's article sumamrizing the situation here, or read it on ZDNet or see the Digg link-posting that has pushing 6000 "diggs" at this point on this page - it links to a youtube posting that has the key in video and text form.
I'm not gutsy enough to risk my LJ account by reposing the code - I'm still a little paranoid. But I really admire what Digg and other sites have done, and I find some parallels - and also some nonparallels - between the situation at Digg and the way a lot of fandomers look to The Powers That Be, which are some of the same people/entities - the major media producers and distributors.
Over the last 20, 30 or more years, a majority of fandomers have chosen to defer to The Powers That Be - if a cease & desist letter comes in regarding fanfic, fanart, or even fanvids, from what I've seen in the last ten years at least, a fandomer is more likely to take his or her content down than fight back and say that the fan-created content falls under fair use, or another exception to copyright or trademark law.
And the first reaction from Digg's lawyers this week (which is the same first reaction I would have had) was to take down the DRM key code. But as Alex Wexelblat wrote on Copyfight, "Digg isn't a sole-author site. Its content, like that of many Web 2.0 sites, comes from its users. Those users were inspired by this act of censorship and simply bombarded Digg with submissions containing the key sequence."
He also wrote something that made me think of the ways that fandomers frequently find to deal with attacks on their creativity from TPTB:
In the past it was fashionable to assert that the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. In the current era we might say that "Web 2.0 treats censorship as inspiration and creates performance around it."
There have, of course, been occasions where people have created performances around censorship, both on the web and off. Even JK Rowling goaded Anne Rice a bit a few years ago by naming a vampire Lestoast on her website (at least, iirc it was a vampire....) and there's the whole Wizard People Dear Reader thing from two years ago.
People cope with copyright and trademark law differently than they did three or five or seven years ago. We lawyers are still as paranoid and make recommendations that the safest course, the one that will cost the least in court costs and time, is to take things down - and yes, that is still the case.
And there will always be people who choose to defer to The Powers That Be and are only playing in the sandbox as long as it's allowed by said Powers, and that's a perfectly understandable take for people to have.
I've been castigated occasionally over the years for positing that at this point in time, no major media company could win in court against fanfic writers, fanartists, or fan-content-hosting sites under a copyright infringement claim, even if the site sold ads, t-shirts or other items to cover hosting and domain fees and other expenses that are reasonably in line with the site's purpose, because all the major media companies have allowed such content for so many years that (at least in the US) statutes of limitations and laches can be used to argue that such works are noninfringing. No, there's no caselaw saying that they are, or they aren't. But a lot of law is arguing by analogy, and this is an analogy that has enough strength to hold water as the laws are currently written and interpreted.
And I now have a hunch that if a media company tried to strike at fan-creators, it wouldn't be too difficult to find support for a fight against a media company among the users of sites like Digg. I may be wrong, and I hope, hope that there will never be a test case. But it's an interesting environment, and it's fascinating how different it is now from what it was five or seven years ago.
But if Digg, who say they get a few Cease & Desist letters each week from people claiming something on the site infringes on their copyright and should be pulled pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, are choosing to say that the key code is so public that they shouldn't suffer for allowing distribution of it, how will the case that may develop from this situation impact fan-writers, fanartists or vidders?
No clue. But it's going to be really interesting to watch.
: happy sigh
I wanted to show off my two new FLAIL icons - the Heroes one is by lay_of_luthien and the Supernatural one is by nyaubaby and I am so so squeeful over both of them!
And in honor of the cancellation of Gilmore Girls, which I never watched in the first place but which I have managed to acquire what I think of as "pre-series Peter Petrelli/Sam Winchester, thank you very much" icons, I've added this one too:
Yes, two Milo Fighting People icons in one week. It's a coincidence, isn't it?
I've also been talking with robertstandring about the SpellCast Live Podcast that we're having two weeks from tomorrow night at Phoenix Rising - you can still send in an audition and get cast in advance - but we're also going to be doing some casting at PR itself - Robert is going to announce a time & place (or two) early next week.
Also, the FA meet-up may be moving from the Acme Oyster Bar to the Sheraton, so FA people can be on-site to deal with some SpellCast and Artists & Authors Night things - more info when we know for certain.
In non-fandom things, I was very amused to see the NY Times use the word frenemy to describe the relationship between Peter Parker and Harry Osborne in Spiderman 3. No, the word isn't in the Merriam Webster dictionary yet, so I guess that the Times now considers the presence of a term in Wikipedia to be sufficient grounds for them to use it? Go, Times! You're ever so very cute!
And in a non-fandom-with-implications-for-fandom thing, I wanted to write about the situation at Digg.com a bit.
Some of you may've heard what Digg and a few other news aggregation-cum-social networking sites did this past week. They decided to allow postings of the code that can be used to crack the encryption on HD DVDs (and I think Blu-Ray too, but I'm not sure). You can read the BBC's article sumamrizing the situation here, or read it on ZDNet or see the Digg link-posting that has pushing 6000 "diggs" at this point on this page - it links to a youtube posting that has the key in video and text form.
I'm not gutsy enough to risk my LJ account by reposing the code - I'm still a little paranoid. But I really admire what Digg and other sites have done, and I find some parallels - and also some nonparallels - between the situation at Digg and the way a lot of fandomers look to The Powers That Be, which are some of the same people/entities - the major media producers and distributors.
Over the last 20, 30 or more years, a majority of fandomers have chosen to defer to The Powers That Be - if a cease & desist letter comes in regarding fanfic, fanart, or even fanvids, from what I've seen in the last ten years at least, a fandomer is more likely to take his or her content down than fight back and say that the fan-created content falls under fair use, or another exception to copyright or trademark law.
And the first reaction from Digg's lawyers this week (which is the same first reaction I would have had) was to take down the DRM key code. But as Alex Wexelblat wrote on Copyfight, "Digg isn't a sole-author site. Its content, like that of many Web 2.0 sites, comes from its users. Those users were inspired by this act of censorship and simply bombarded Digg with submissions containing the key sequence."
He also wrote something that made me think of the ways that fandomers frequently find to deal with attacks on their creativity from TPTB:
In the past it was fashionable to assert that the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. In the current era we might say that "Web 2.0 treats censorship as inspiration and creates performance around it."
There have, of course, been occasions where people have created performances around censorship, both on the web and off. Even JK Rowling goaded Anne Rice a bit a few years ago by naming a vampire Lestoast on her website (at least, iirc it was a vampire....) and there's the whole Wizard People Dear Reader thing from two years ago.
People cope with copyright and trademark law differently than they did three or five or seven years ago. We lawyers are still as paranoid and make recommendations that the safest course, the one that will cost the least in court costs and time, is to take things down - and yes, that is still the case.
And there will always be people who choose to defer to The Powers That Be and are only playing in the sandbox as long as it's allowed by said Powers, and that's a perfectly understandable take for people to have.
I've been castigated occasionally over the years for positing that at this point in time, no major media company could win in court against fanfic writers, fanartists, or fan-content-hosting sites under a copyright infringement claim, even if the site sold ads, t-shirts or other items to cover hosting and domain fees and other expenses that are reasonably in line with the site's purpose, because all the major media companies have allowed such content for so many years that (at least in the US) statutes of limitations and laches can be used to argue that such works are noninfringing. No, there's no caselaw saying that they are, or they aren't. But a lot of law is arguing by analogy, and this is an analogy that has enough strength to hold water as the laws are currently written and interpreted.
And I now have a hunch that if a media company tried to strike at fan-creators, it wouldn't be too difficult to find support for a fight against a media company among the users of sites like Digg. I may be wrong, and I hope, hope that there will never be a test case. But it's an interesting environment, and it's fascinating how different it is now from what it was five or seven years ago.
But if Digg, who say they get a few Cease & Desist letters each week from people claiming something on the site infringes on their copyright and should be pulled pursuant to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, are choosing to say that the key code is so public that they shouldn't suffer for allowing distribution of it, how will the case that may develop from this situation impact fan-writers, fanartists or vidders?
No clue. But it's going to be really interesting to watch.